Rising Star Blog

Why are you taking so long?

05.08.2009 In Games / By torisu (RSG)

Lots of people ask when a game is being released, particularly if it was released in other territories some months ago. Sometimes we won't provide a release date and many people wonder why not - which is fair enough.

Well, I can't go into specifics for any particular title, because of commercial confidentiality and the risk of unwittingly annoying people, but I'll try to give a broad overview of some reasons. Hopefully it won't be too general to be useless or boring.

As you know we focus on bringing Japanese titles to PAL territories. Sometimes the developer / publisher of a Japanese title might not have considered (or factored in their considerations) markets outside of Japan, or they may have wanted to wait to see how it was received in Japan before risking more money on taking it outside. So there will be a bit of work to do - not just in terms of localisation - in bringing the game to our territories. We might also have to work with licensors (if the game depends on a licence) and their territory offices, too.

The platform holders - Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony - are global names but have offices dedicated to each territory, e.g. Nintendo of Europe. Now, what is good for one territory is not automatically considered good for another, so there will be an approvals process to go through specific to that area. We also have to work with them to schedule manufacturing for a specific date, because they will have different manufacturing workloads at different times.

We also have a release schedule and this depends on the other titles we want to publish and what we think are optimal times to publish. We keep an eye on the market and forthcoming releases to try to find the best time to release a title - obviously we want to publish at a time when people would be more likely to buy it but try to avoid being lost under numerous or popular titles.

So there are a few reasons there.

By the way, we welcome questions - it shows there is interest! Feel free to ask anything.

torisu

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11 Comments

Tantalus007 says: Nice! Acomment function. Cool Article! But questions? Well, quite general, that text. I would like to read something about FRAGILE, maybe how you guys handle the drawings etc.

torisu (RSG) says: Hi, what do you mean by handle the drawings?

Paladin says: Dear god, that image made my laugh really hard!

Tantalus007 says: I meant the drawings on the walls in FRAGILE, for example, but actually I only want to read some things about FRAGILE^^

torisu (RSG) says: aha! Well in that case I'll try to write something interesting about it. Other than it's really good.

AngelFox says: I always wanted to know why some games keep the original Japanese names (items, people etc) and other games don't. That and how you go about picking the new names.

landlock says: I can understand alot of that but sometimes like Avalon Code for example was released in March in America. I can't understand why it would take so long for a game like that even taking into the points you made above. Which brings me to my next point because Rising Star releases alot of games at the so called hardcore audience (an audience more likely to import) would you be put off releasing a DS/PS3 game because of the fact they are region free in America and can be imported at ease?

torisu (RSG) says: Landlock, there are some questions I can't answer about specific titles. I can only emphasise the bit about "optimal times to publish"...

Shrinx says: Well, that's kind of hard to believe, sorry. All other publishers have to do this processes too - and most of them are lightyears faster than RSG. It's just no fun to wait almost THREE years for a new Harvest Moon titel (example now). That's a period far too long even with all those processes.

Drym says: It's a old entry, but I want to leave a message : You make very good job translation, but unfortunately it's true that it takes so long time... We must wait for 2 or 3 years to get finally a game in our country. And, in some way, it's bad for you business 'cause gamers who don't want to wait, prefer to import their favorite games, from States probably for a attractive price. I hope this system will change, because Europe is always last for games :( Thanks to you. Keep up the good work.

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